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Welcome the to VIP family!

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PandoDaily

PandoDaily is a brand new tech site started by Sarah Lacy, former senior editor at TechCrunch. From her announcement post:

We have one goal here at PandoDaily: To be the site-of-record for that startup root-system and everything that springs up from it, cycle-after-cycle. That sounds simple but it’ll be incredibly hard to pull off. It’s not something we accomplish on day one or even day 300. It’s something we accomplish by waking up every single day and writing the best stuff we can, and continually adding like-minded staffers who have the passion, drive and talent to do the same.

Grist

Grist, a non-profit environmental news publication:

Grist has been dishing out environmental news and commentary with a wry twist since 1999 — which, to be frank, was way before most people cared about such things. Now that green is in every headline and on every store shelf (bamboo hair gel, anyone?), Grist is the one site you can count on to help you make sense of it all

Welcome to the VIP family, Pando Daily & Grist! 

Ready to become a VIP Services Client? Some of the world’s biggest brands rely on WordPress.com VIP Services.

Welcome to the WordPress.com VIP family!

Ready to become a VIP Services Client? Some of the world’s biggest brands rely on WordPress.com VIP Services.

Tell us about the site:
Mac Miller is yet another successful artist hailing from Pittsburgh’s Rostrum Records.  Rostrum chose 6Degrees to build a community site that would be a great destination for fans interested in staying up on news, tour, photos, videos and much more.

What were the reasons you chose WordPress to build the site?
Mac’s fan base is huge but also active.  We needed an established content management system that would be able to handle the traffic while also having the functionality a music artist requires.  After we discovered BuddyPress there was no question that the WordPress / BuddyPress combination was the right direction to go.  We’re also pleased with WordPress’s admin system as we find it very user-friendly for any content managers that me assisting the site.  Bottom line, WordPress is stable, user-friendly and has an incredible developer community supporting it.  All these resources made WordPress the answer.

What are your team’s favorite WordPress features?

Custom post types are very impressive and flexible, and the huge library of plugins for almost any feature you could want.

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1. Tell us what your blog and book are about.

DAVID: You Are Not So Smart is a celebration of self delusion. One topic at a time, it explores how silly and irrational we all are through the lens of fascinating psychological studies. It started out as a blog just pointing out interesting things around that theme, but once I started gaining fans and saw my hits growing, I made the effort to write longer, more in-depth pieces about cognitive biases and other fun things. The book is an expanded version of the blog, similar in format.

2. What encouraged you to create a blog that celebrates self delusion? How has your life changed as a result of learning so much about psychology and irrational thinking?

DAVID: I tried a lot of different blog ideas before You Are Not So Smart. My first real attempt at keeping a blog about interesting things in psychology and neuroscience began around 2003. I gave up on that a few years later and tried a blog about feature writing. It wasn’t until I saw a video demonstration of inattentional blindness that blew my mind and prompted me to launch You Are Not So Smart in late 2009.

The result of writing about self-delusion all the time? It’s been great. My wife and I are always saying things like, “Hold on, that’s just the anchoring effect,” or “I think you are confabulating right now.” We’ve found that the articles can be a vehicle for self improvement, but always when you least expect it. Also, I don’t argue online anymore because I’ve learned through the research how futile and fruitless it is. It’s a wonderful thing to delete from your life.

3. So how’d you score the book deal?

DAVID: I got into a heated online argument with two friends over which was better, the PS3 or the Xbox 360. The argument went on for days, and I think we all crossed the line, insulting each other and getting legitimately angry – and we’re friends in real life! I thought it would make a great blog post, so I researched why I was so brand loyal and silly.

That became my post on brand loyalty and fanboyism, which I published that post at about the same time an iPhone prototype was stolen. With the buzz around fanboyism at an all-time high, someone at Gizmodo saw my post and asked if they could republish it with links back. I agreed, and all of a sudden my hits went through the roof. I kept writing and posting and soon emails arrived from the publishing world asking if I was interested in turning the blog into a book. I said hell yes.

4. Why did you choose WordPress.com, and what do you like most about it?

DAVID: I’ve tried every other service out there, but WordPress.com is the most robust. I wanted something clean and elegant and easy, but with enough features to allow for scaling up my blog if it ever caught on with a larger audience. It was the right move.

This is an amazing and revolutionary time for writers. The barriers to entry are so low, and the platforms like WordPress.com so well-made, anyone with a voice can start shouting and be heard. Instead of writing a book and hoping a publisher won’t throw it into the slush pile, writers can start a blog and build a fan base. They can prove to publishers there is a market for their work and their voice.

A generation ago, a writer like me would never be discovered, never get a shot at the big time. Blogging platforms like WordPress.com are changing the lives of all manner of artists and activists. I think that’s fantastic.

Congratulations, David!

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In English, Brighterlife.ca:

And Simplementbrilliant.ca in French:

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It’s great to see Techland, Swampland, Battleland, and other TIME.com verticals that run on WordPress.com VIP highlighted in this article:

“In developing the vertical strategy, we decided to pinpoint areas of reader and advertiser interest, blow them out as mini-publications in their own right,” (Jim) Frederick (the site’s managing editor) said. “The idea was to get writers who can speak to Tech enthusiasts for Techland or personal finance fans at Moneyland, and forge new readerships, while still embracing our core audience and feeling familiar to our Time loyalists, too.””

LightBox, an amazing photography blog that lives on WordPress.com VIP and then connects effortlessly to Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr, is a great example of WordPress as a digital hub. TIME.com uses the WordPress site to draw in audiences from various services back to the core content.

Nice work TIME.com team !

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Tell us about the site:
Animal Politico is a Mexican political portal. It’s only available online and is powered almost entirely by WordPress. Since its launch last Autumn, there are over 5000 articles and 44 sub-blogs out of which 3 sub-blogs are used as sort of a discussion forum.

Other features include:

• Facebook connect for subscribers – only logged-in users can post comments
• Custom profile fields for users like date of birth, education level, etc.
• Custom taxonomies are used for home-page positioning of articles
• Ajax powered photo-galleries and video-galleries
• MailChimp integration – sending newsletters directly from the WP admin panel.

What publishing challenges did WordPress help Animal Politico address?
I think what was most needed by the editors was flexibility to post, sort and prioritize news articles. With the help of custom taxonomies and a few custom meta-boxes we were able to offer them just that without any problems. Price was also an issue and choosing WordPress as our platform considerably reduced the development expenses.

What are your (development) team’s favorite WordPress features?
I think the flexibility we get from the hooks and filters system is what we love most. It provides almost unlimited flexibility without disrupting the update path.

Are you a publisher working with WordPress? We want to hear from you. 

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